Home buyers report

jojo9239

Are they worth it? Someone told me just to get a builder to come round have a look at the house check for anything major and save our £500 thanks in advance

nas5591

Are they worth it? Someone told me just to get a builder to come round have a look at the house check for anything major and save our £500 thanks in advance

Hi jojo9239,

We had a Homebuyer's Report carried out on the property we're currently purchasing. I'm not sure if it varies between surveyors, but we received a very detailed report with photographs and descriptions of any potential concerns, which included walls, floors, electrics, water pipes, boiler, loft space and outside fittings (chimney, roof, fascias and gutters). It's definitely more for peace of mind than anything else.

The only downsides are:
1) if there's any obstructions to floorboards, drains, cupboards ect. They might not check them (our surveyor noted about a storm drain in our back garden and said it was inaccessible due to a plant pot! He even took a photo of the plant pot!).
2) Due to the red, amber, green rating, things that may be minor may be reported as serious (and vice-versa) (our surveyor made it sound like the roof was going to collapse any day - after getting a specialist to look at it, it was just a few loose tiles), but they have to be extra cautious in case anything does happen.

We paid £345 for ours, so it might be worth shopping around a little I think the price goes off house value and area too. Hope this helps!

Davesnave

It depends on the house. As you haven't told us what age/kind of house it is, and we don't know the person you say is a builder, we can't begin to assess the wisdom of using him/her instead of a surveyor.

I know about house construction and the most common problems, while people in my family are qualified builders with a wealth of experience, so I've never used a surveyor, but neither have I bought anything more than than 50 years old.

When my daughter recently decided to purchase a Victorian wreck, the first thing we all said was, "Get a full structural survey!"